


I have scarcely left you

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst : seriously, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Not A Fix-It, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:05:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She put a seal upon his hearts.</p><p>And her pleading eyes will keep it close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have scarcely left you

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Some metaphors and descriptions could shock readers. Though it really is not that gruesome.
> 
> Title from Absence by Pablo Neruda.
> 
> Notes: The White Island is the resting place of Akhilleus, a mythological entrance to Elyseum.

_Te montrer à l'univers, le temps d'un éclair, puis m'enfermer avec toi, seul, et te regarder pendant l'éternité._

Barjavel – La nuit des Temps.

 

i.

She cries thief, calls it foul.

She collapses on herself, under the weight of minutes unlived – none left. Empty-barreled and she was playing Russian roulette.

_Where do they lie, those hours mapped out, trodden by the lover’s foot?_

Not burnt, not electrocuted. Exhaustion sinks her breath before her synapses snap. Moral exhaustion. He knew all along of their vows. Right from the beginning, she had spread her cards.

_Are we good?_

He knew all along. He willingly trespassed.

_Where the hell have you been?_

_Trust you, seriously?_

_What else have you got?_

He sang of beauties undesigned, when she was young and he was old. She pledged words of enslavement; his name.

Right from the beginning, he knew of their vows, still willingly trespassed.

She placed a seal upon his hearts. He feared the moment he had to open it, postponing ever. In the end, burning out the hours and seconds they had left. _Not enough, not enough_ , she can hear her fingers tremble.

More of his face, more of his touch, more of his hair, stupid hair. They are too fluffy this young.

His eyes are closed and she thinks she is robbing their bond. Her hands on his face clip and pummel where they should throb.

But _still_ , she begs soundlessly. She caresses his cheeks, surprised to find them so unpolished by her hands.

Too soon, but still more.

The countdown is running and she checks one last time his handcuffs, before pushing the screwdriver and diary aside, out of his reach.

As she settles into the seat, she can feel her spine crack.

Clausula.

“Hush now. Spoilers.”

 _Where do they lie, those hours steep?_ She has been laid to rest in a field of punctual times.

 

ii.

He does not know time, nor does he know loss. His hands are bound, his mind bottled up.

He just knows someone has died in vain. In vain. She put a seal upon his hearts.

And her pleading eyes will keep it close.

_For how long?_

If the story has its way, what was closed with a name would open with another.

End of a future.

He works to get his lower body to reach the screwdriver. After minutes and contortions, the device twirls towards him and he takes it.

Once out of his bonds, he edges close to her still body. The damages are deep, hands melted and face undecipherable. Features blurred and furrows too many. She burnt.

He kneels beside her, slowly brings his hands to the remains of her mask and gathers his thoughts. He has little to invoke. Eddies of power blossom at his finger tips and pass her face like pencils. The mouth emerges again first, the nose arcs proudly and her eyes slice seductively. Her cheeks fill out and he can almost believe she is sleeping. If he ignores the distorted hands.

But he cannot spend much energy on a stranger.

He has never tried restoring dead tissues with bio-energy before. He knew it was feasible, even on other species. As long as the cells are all dead.

 _It is a rather beautiful face_ , he thinks. Not one he could love. Not yet. But one he can recognise as being moulded by him one day.

Portrait of a future.

His token of gratitude. Because he knows he would not fulfill the promise of future she threw at him. Not before long.

For now, she belongs to her loved ones. People unknown to him. He would not want them to receive in their arms the body of a stranger.

The mourning is not his. He gathers her collapsed form in his arms. So light, she could slip between his fingers. He has to break her hands to get her to let go of the cables. To cover them, he deposits the diary in her lap.

She is sleeping now.

The regenerative energy hangs around the seat and he lets out a contented sigh.

“Mystery solved.”

 

iii.

“It was long ago the biggest Library in the Universe. A planet of books.”

His coat is dark and his hair white. His eyes shine with youth and rebellious streaks adorn his brows.

“What happened?” Susan asks. Her hands are trailing the lower shelves near.

The daylight is pooling onto the alleys and turns. Roaming the place is like diving above the remnants of a drowned city. The roof is open, the partition of irregular outlines casting their stupefying shadows on the floor. They step on projected patterns, fantastical and disrupted. The moss under their foot blunts the shards.

“What can happen? Planets die. Like any other thing. A bigger one was built elsewhere.” He pokes with his cane the flat of a shelf still spared by the moss and ivy. “It will not be the first and certainly won’t be the last biggest library in the Universe. Humans are like that. Always bigger and higher and faster. And then they forget what they built, leave them to rot. Or destroy it. Silly apes, really. No perspective at all.”

“It’s rather beautiful.” Barbara observes, following closely Susan’s movements, her twirls and sighs in the maze of _lignin_ and mould. The air is heavy with the life of the deep, the life of the silent. Weeds, mushrooms, insects, the ones who made a vow to tombs and ruins.

“Yes, yes.” The Doctor puckers his lips. “Trees and old books aplenty. I wouldn’t dare to extract one from its dust-caked ivy-sealed tomb though; it would just shatter to smithereens.”

Ian pokes his head through an empty shelf and Barbara jolts him back to her. He soundlessly beheads himself in jest. Barbara rounds the corner to find the Doctor, eager to learn more about the building.

“Or the whole structure could collapse on us. How old are these walls?”

The Doctor is studying the deposit of dust he grated with the help of his cane and waves dismissively his hand at her.

“Very. I didn’t check precisely the date.”

From the corner, Ian’s head appears, followed by impish Susan’s. 

“You mean you had no control over the landing again.” He states coyly before shooting a sly look at the young woman giggling.

“Chesterton, I know perfectly well what I am doing,” the Doctor grumbles. “Ruins have no timetable.”

Barbara edges closer to Ian and nips at his elbow to attract his attention.

“He’s right.” She whispers in his ear. “Nobody kidnapped you to criticise his driving.”

 

iv.

In his memory, she dies like a star does.

Whole body temperature soaring, in a second. All blazing light and surging power. Pure energy collapsing on itself as her body burns, matter converting into energy, photons splaying around, short-lived, mysterious, ancient. Like the fossil radiation witness of the creation of time, her self carries on meeting him, witness of a time before Ponds and life, a time he crossed -will cross- with her in an infinite dance of opposite.

The more complex, the more vulnerable. Anomaly in time she is, complicated time event, she burnt in a second. And all these times he could have written her off, his personal little paradox.

At the heart of her burn and fuse heavy atoms, secrets and sorrows he knows she can never disclose to him. Matrix of the Universe.

In his memory, there are no cuffs. She casts a spell on him. Leaves him powerless.

He witnesses the death of an enchantress.

_Where is your body, River? Was it really such a wonder laws of nature didn’t it to leave a trace?_

_Your bones must have turned into dust; where is the philter made of your desiccated hearts?_

_What kind of gothic alchemist brewed your particles-thin remains and used it as firing powder?_

River Song outwitted the Universe. River Song left Time checkered and crossed.

He never carried her body out of the Library. He never left her to Lux.

Spirited away. In a puff of smoke and statics.

As always. And always is her resting place.

 _Always_. Past the White Island, second to the right after Avalon and then straight on till the Index.

He thought saying goodbye to her would teach him the path to find her at last. Between dreams and circuits, he held in his hands a ghost of wires and connections. For him only to behold. Because her true form is not of a Goddess, eternal in Death, or of a spirit, his Beatrice.

Her true form he concealed with a dash of regenerative energy. Flinging a veil on the mystery. A veil of dead nerves and vessels recast in life.

He should have known.

In his memory, he knew even then.

He has not the strength to descend on the platform and face her. He carries his body soundlessly, back to the TARDIS, without a glance for the stack of dirt now covering the floor or the dust oddly heaped at the bottom of the stairs.

It seems even the shadows could not survive on rodents and silence for ever.

 

v.

They wander in and out like idle travelers.

It must have been a beautiful place, in a time long gone. Spires of metal soaring to the purple sky, large glass domes burst and blazing teeth, bridges and platforms collapsed and sunken. Yet the forest has taken hold of everything and the bridges made of fallen trunks are safer to the foot.

The Doctor talks a lot, keeping his eyes trained to Susan. A forlorn glaze over the eyes, she is engrossed in a conversation with Barbara.

They come by a circular space, adorned with vegetation slightly different from the other clearings. The temperature seems higher in this area of the ruins. The Doctor frowns, scanning the room before extracting from his coat the sonic device. He levels it at the floor and the ground answers with a creaky shudder before stilling. The party has gathered behind him.

“What is it?” Ian sputters.

“Some sort of mechanism underground.” The Doctor scoffs.

They all stand motionless for what seems minutes, before the Doctor starts and strides purposefully to the centre of the clearing. His screwdriver finds his pocket and he crawls on his knees, working to tear the vegetation away. Under his hands opens a tunnel, bottomless, its walls giving a baleful light.

The rest of the group hurries to his side and bends over the gap of light.

“What on earth…” Ian begins.

“Yes, exactly, on earth, young man. It is a perfectly sensible specimen of gravity platform. Though there seems to be no platform left.” The Doctor presses his palm to the floor, absorbed, before struggling to his feet. “I’m sorry; it is as far as we go.”

“If they are sensible enough, they must have thought of a service stair,” Susan whispers. Her eyes are wide and shifting.

 

vi.

Most of all, he fears the sound produced by the computers, down under. Like breathing, but numb and artificial; some comatose castaway hooked up to tubes and lungs of wires.

He could just call her name and her face with her little scars and holes would stare down at him. Yet blankly. With the breathing, it could be easy to pretend she is still there. Only maintained alive.

He did not come to visit her.

He stands motionless on the platform, refusing to use his sonic and find her.

His feet pound against the surface. He is summoning her from the underbelly of life, rather than tentatively groping his way to her.

He counts slowly, achingly and each tap on the metallic surface resonates within him. He falls into a pattern, cardiac. Four beats.

He can’t tell if she has any anymore, that’s something you lose touch with in the computer. The discomfort of your own body. The pounding of the blood on the pillow. The scratching of her eyelashes on the fabric as she stays awake.

Sounds that he had learnt to seek in the darkness of their night, that he resorted to shape in the silence of her wake.

“When I first slept in here, Charlotte had designed a single bed for me.”

He instinctively turns to the nod, lurking in a corner of the room, and inches toward a face he dares not to recognise as River’s.

“How did you know?” The desire to touch her nudges his mind, but it’s a damp feeling he would not encourage.

Her face is different from what he remembers. Dozens of last times with seven different versions of his wife tend to shift his perception of her face. He cannot even recall if she looks the way she did in the Library.

River would never pass an opportunity to play him.

“You’re not the only one who can always hear,” she says, tone deflated.

“Stop,” he simply asks. He begins traipsing around, between the wild flowers, avoiding any visual contact.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice is even and academic, jarring in the crumbling landscape. The walls are beginning to fall, weeds and mosses taking over. A cricket rings its toppling cry.

He doesn’t answer, instead edges to the platform and draws his screwdriver to unlock the mechanism.

The platform does not budge and he frowns.

“Is it a bug? Did the power give up?” he tries not to sound strained. Those are technical issues he did not wish to encounter on his journey. He looks up to her face and shudders.

She casts a cold eye on him. Devoid of emotions. He has to remind himself, again, she is not River.

“Tell me what you are going to do.”

“I wanted to see you,” he falters.

“You do not want to see me.”

He does not move from the platform. She stares at him from across the room.

“Let me in.” He cautiously urges. “Please.”

Her lips open and drift shut. He can almost believe she hesitated.

“You know why I am here.” Staying on his island of metal, when he senses her face falling into familiar grimaces, is starting to hurt.  He folds his arms on his chest, refraining from seeking her. “Don’t let me rot outside.”

“Your time has not come,” she states clearly.

“You can’t know that!” If only she could shudder. He needs for her to feel the blow of his impatience welling in his chest. It is lost on a marble face and he lowers his voice. “You don’t know that anymore, River. You’re dead. You’ve been for a very long time.”

He does not add he keeps seeing her, younger. She knows. But a strange shift has occurred in their meetings. A shift she described perfectly, long ago, in this very tomb.

_Not done yet._

Finished River is lush and warm and confident and Professor.

River he can never find, never the right version of her. But in death, endures this infinite River, uploaded.

He always knows where to find her when she is dead. He gives in, finally, and contemplates her face. Colours and lines in place.

Portrait of an absence.

“A very long time. River, let me in.”

“The Datacore is dying, slowly but surely. Charlotte and I have been working on the power assignments. Saving us time.” He marvels at the failure of the Flesh to reproduce the flexing of her lips, the rounding of her cheeks, the glaze in her eyes. “It’s a computer, not the Matrix. You can still live. You do not get to decide when you leave.”

 _But you did_ , he keeps to himself.

“It’s not about deciding to leave. It’s about choosing to be with you,” he confesses. His encounters with River in the Library have been a painful succession of admissions: he did not know her, he told her his name, he hurt too much. And now this. But she is as unyielding as ever.

“The Datacore is not eternal. We shall not meet again.”

She knows considering the state of the computer such a huge transfer could burn the whole system. She would not risk a transfer or she is determined to follow that rule, _not always._ Even beyond Time.

“You still do not get it. Your body died here.”

He heaves a sigh and steps out of the circle.

“What was you, River, empirically speaking, carbons, hydrogens and oxygens, is still here. I am breathing you.”

_Humour me. Let me have a hold on you. I gave you flesh once, when you were a signal caught in the TARDIS’ memories, when you were a doll of melted bones. What I returned to the world was a mask. Your face never left the Library. But his is something she must never learn._

He steps closer. River has never been so intimidating than when she is not there.

“When I fade, and fading I am River -I wish you could see the crocheted skin, the two-way eyes, the tramp-less steps.”

He raises a hand to her face, only to realise she cannot feel him. Senseless and beautiful. Unreachable.

“You had more substance when you were a ghost, River, made of unlived minutes and seconds of absence.”

Her lips are sealed and he can see the furrows on her pink flesh. Not hers. His arms open before him, in search of a body to enclose. Something to drag back with him, to weigh down his frame.

He needs to reach her. He needs his words to caress her cheeks, his breathes to brush the curls from her face.

His body drifts away from her. 

_I cannot bring you back. I can follow you._

“Let these scatter and crumble, undo the seams of life, barely there. When I fade, I want my oxygens, hydrogens and carbons to tessellate with yours. I want to die here. Let me in.”

“You’re cute.”

He jerks his head up and blinks hard. There is a smile on her face. Gentle and light. Not commiserating. Not River’s smile. But still.

“You are nothing but a nostalgic nerd. You cling to nothings.” She chuckles, though her face is blank.

_Oh._

This is River. His teeth clatter shut, for fear of chasing her. His confidence teeters. As in Trenzalore, she seems painfully alive.

“I have nothing.” He confides. “I lived too long. My body is held together by a thought: I shall be here, with you.”

“To walk in death.”

 _No,_ a timid voice pleads. Not death. It’s not. Just another adventure.

_I just need to be guided in._

“Then walk with me. I’ll die anyway. Here or on the battlefield.” The battlefield in question is painfully defined in his mind. Dreary place where River is a short-cut, a subterfuge, a passage.

The place he would never go to.

“I’m not kicking you out.” So soft and faint is her voice, again he senses he can perceive River behind. In the silences and echoes. Longing makes him lurch forward and he nearly cries out. “I’m sorry. You do not get to choose. Off you go.”

Her face begins melting into a blank Flesh model and he springs forward to catch her. His hand finds a sketch of face, lithe and cold. He has half a mind to beat the clay.

He stumbles away from her, dry. His knees give in on the platform and he rocks silently there.

He could stay and die here. He could call and knock. Until she lets him in.

_They were good._

“Open the door,” he coos. ”Let me in.”

He thought she would always be there for him.

Always and completely.

He thought he would always have River.

The nod remains listless.

 

vii.

The path they follow is of echoes and lights, dancing and fleeing before them. They all take in the scenery with wide eyes and quivering lips. The Doctor explains there is nothing extraordinary, a mere phenomenon observed on certain planets. The vegetation around power sources adapts and draws energy from the remaining electricity, offering remarkable conductors for the installation. Even preserving its longevity.

“There is no telling how old the library is. But somehow, the fauna helped maintain the dry atmosphere down here.”

He prods at a panel, curtained with wires and roots. Indicators still blink from time to time. So faintly they seem like distant stars.

“Obviously still working. I wonder if it will ever go to sleep.”

He follows the cables for a few feet in the bowel, before stopping and eyeing the globe hovering high above on their right, casting a blue light on them. By waves. As if throbbing.

His companions fall in step behind, silent. Each sound seems a knock on a vault’s door. And the breathing around is not an expected answer.

“Strange.” He chirps, oblivious. “Can’t we get closer?”

 

viii.

Trenzalore.

He won’t say the name.

For years, he tried to change and escape it. He would not -could not- be buried there on a blood-drenched, desecrated planet. He could cry in anger at the thought of it being his resting place, a fixed point.

He thought he grew out of his thirst for young blood and self-hatred, his thirst for revenge and justice. He thought he learnt the Universe had fared well millions of years before his birth, millions after his death. He thought he learnt extinction was the rule. He thought he had earned peace.

The memory of his future on Trenzalore kept him crawling out of his den of memories and regrets, mending generations of humans to protect and to care for their liberty, their integrity and the chance they had been offered to show mercy. At last, he had become Ace’s Professor.

He thought he could rewrite time. He did not want to be buried as a soldier.

She was right, the woman without a body, with a copy of a soul to unwind eternity. He managed to live and loved longer.

When he had begged her, before Death’s doors, her doors, he had been an infant, untaught in all things lost and perished.

He did not know intangible then, he did not know drained thoughts. He had worn weariness on his skin for millennia before learning it is a fabric best used around the collar, inside the mouth, down the throat. He had been ushered to the edges and far ends of the Universe by idleness and volition, only to find the shrill symphony of dead stars surpassed his cry. Their light shone long after their death.

He fell into disrepair. The brevity of his breath reduced to dots on paper, scattered and jammed at places. A map of the skies on his lips.

He could not wear sorrow on his skin, he had too little of it left.  

Trenzalore came and he died. At least he thought he did.

The last blow botched up the back of his head and his hypothalamus flowered out like a _Celosia Cristata_ at the back of his skull before spiraling down and hitting the floor of the TARDIS with a crystal sputter. The shooter, white, rattled out with a scream. In the middle of the console room, heaps of colours began lassoing around and up, blindly, before soaring silently to the ceiling, settling gashes of memories like a gigantic pillar of nerves.

He gasped, fell on the ground; the scene was familiar. Trenzalore finally, the way he remembered it. With a sob, he crawled and tried to grasp his memories, willing something for himself still. He fumbled and curled his fingers, unable to coordinate his thoughts with his movements. He limped back to the railing and hung there, staring at his ship, while the tears were welling into his eyes. The thought of the wound open for the Great Intelligence to penetrate, even Clara, had him whimpering like an infant.

No one wants to die knowing one’s tomb is going to be opened. No one wants to die knowing one was laid to rest in a hopeless, naked earth. Filled with the cries of soldiers fallen.

No one wants to die knowing it. It is terrifying and he is so alone. So far from home.

_Why isn‘t he dead yet? Why has he been dead for millennia? Why this final robbing?_

He always thought it strange that he did not leave any corporeal remains in Trenzalore.

Scar tissues. Silly. What he had told them, that day. What they saw was a map of dreams and memories. With direct access to the Time Vortex. A time traveler is more than his travels.

Other Time Lords lived longer and they all died on Gallifrey. Which would make his lost planet the equivalent of a time-energy fuelled black hole, larger than anything one could imagine. Had it been possible, the Time lords themselves could not have devised such a voracious way to annihilate the Universe.

Time lords leave bodies behind –others, yes- , they are burnt. But where did his body go? There is no one else. The TARDIS would not let anyone approach.

Although never. Completely.

In his grave, on Trenzalore, there was no body. He should have seen at least the flowers of the dead as they were called. Similar to Forget-me-not in appearance. Only with petals so light-deflecting they often go unnoticed. Of with colours dashing like nebulas. He could not remember. He had not seen any for a very long time. Not since…

Had he still possessed lids –they had retracted through lack of sleep –he would have blinked. He did see them though. Outside Gallifrey.

Once.

A very long time ago.

On the floor, the screwdriver had rolled, the red setting activated. Sparks of regenerative energy escaped his fingers, gingerly, by waves finding the railing, wrapping long ivies around. The remains would with time work as fertilizer and allow the luxuriant vegetation he had observed here. There was not enough to carry him to his next body.

Painfully he got up to his feet and pleaded the TARDIS.

“You know where to.”

 

ix.

When the fifth time comes, he doesn’t beseech. He doesn’t utter the words. Breath has left his lungs since long. He had lived too long then; overstepping the commandment of the Time lords, he had simply stretched his existence to the point where his skins are layered with star dust he fished to caulk the cracks.

All the doors are open; there were none left. Trees are growing where pillars and stones stood. The gravity platform is practically stuck with vegetation. But underground, the machines are still faithfully running.

The last words escaping his breathing, mortal lips are for his ship.

“Sorry to leave you alone for the journey back, old Girl. Got to preserve the Timelines. That’s one place you cannot follow. That’s okay, she’ll take over from here.”

He sags against the panels behind her fateful seat and drops a kiss to the cool metal.

He has been waiting for so long. She has been waiting for him to forget about her, about life, about his bodies. She had been waiting for him to lose his memories.

His mind was too big, his memories too weighted. He knows the upload could well have caused the machine to give up and burn out. But not now. Not anymore.

He has been emptied and robbed. Cleansed and prepared for his last journey.

He wraps a finger around the sonic and plucks it into the receiver.

Two heartbeats and the Doctor dies.

“Hello.” He bubbles up.

“Hello.” She smiles.

The moment the system overloads never materialises inside. They are locked in an instant stretching to infinity, on the verge of collapse. Halfway gone for eternity.

 

x.

The old man stops and behind him, the small party holds one breath. Ian’s hand finds Barbara’s and Susan’s huddles to her side.

It is ivy of decadent and unusual beauty rising behind what must have been a metallic chair. Though the eye cannot perceive their changes with accuracy, the branches seem to ebb and grow around, but so faintly one could mistake it for the flares darted by the decaying power source above. The ivy is entwined with a billow of wires. Reaching together the pallid globe of light, barely glowing.

Spurts of power escape the sphere, often licking the frail structure of metals and twigs. The cables have blended with the fibers, or embraced them. Almost translucent as if made of moon gleams. The heat should have deterred its growth and merging but with the vain persistence of snow stacking on a spire, holding the bared wires like fingers closing on a nape, they folded around each other.

The Doctor blinks away.

“Forget-me-not?” Susan murmurs.


End file.
